Video library/Updating or removing videos

General topics

Videos

Management

Updating or removing videos

1 Updating the library

There are several ways you can scan your movies into the Video library:

• Choose automatic scan when you set the content for the source.
• Select the item in file view and either press I on the keyboard, or bring up the contextual menu (press C) and select "Movie information" or "TV show information"
  • If the file is already scanned in, you can also use the info screen to refresh/update that entry in the library.
• You can select the share/folder that your videos are in and choose "Scan for new content" from the contextual menu (press C), which scans all files in that share/folder.
• In Library view you can choose "Update library" from the contextual menu (press C).
• Have XBMC scan for new items upon start up by going to  Settings -> Video -> Library -> Update library on startup 
• Add-on:XBMC Library Auto Update can be used to schedule automatic updates to the library.
• Add-on:Library watchdog can be used to watch folders for new files to trigger library updates.

2 Refreshing the library

To refresh the information for existing videos:

Refresh individually

1. Select the item in file view and either press I on the keyboard, or bring up the contextual menu (press C).
2. Select "Movie information" or "TV show information".
3. Then select "Refresh".

When refreshing individually you can also choose to just refresh or manually select images for various views (cover art, fanart, thumbnails, etc).

Refresh by source/folder

1. Remove a source/folder from the library by changing the content setting to "None".
2. When XBMC asks you if you want to remove those items from the library, say yes.
3. XBMC will then show a progress bar and remove those entries.
4. Changing it back to what it was before.
5. XBMC will then rescan in those entries.

3 Removing videos

• You can remove the contents of entire folders/sources from the library by setting content to <None>, even if the parent folder is still included in the library. See #Removing sources for more info.

• Individual entries can also be removed by bringing up the contextual menu (press C on a keyboard) and selecting "Remove from library".

• Cleaning up the Video Library (removing invalid and missing videos) can be done in Videos Settings with the 'Clean Library' option.

•  Editor note: Note delete file list settings here as also an option for those who want to delete the files as well 

4 Removing sources

Setting the content back to (None) after previously having selected a scraper for a source, will prompt users if they want to remove the contents from the Library.

This is recommended if you wish to switch scrapers. First set content to (None) and then choose the new scraper.

Setting content to (None) also removes the contents of the selected folder from the Library altogether. This is useful if you want to remove the contents of an entire folder from the video library as removing entries from the contextual menu will only remove single items.